Turtle, Turtle!

HAPPY FIRST BIRTHDAY SHAWN!! Well it's been a week now, but I can still say it, right??

My nephew turned 1 last Tuesday and his birthday party was Saturday so of course, I was making the dessert! I've always wanted to make a cupcake cake. Ya know, when people arrange cupcakes in a shape and then spread the icing all over?? I LOVE these! They can be so fun. I was browsing the Internet looking for fun shapes or animals to make for his party and was torn between a monkey and a turtle. I decided to go with the turtle! (Hence the name of this blog)

Kids + chocolate PROBABLY isn't a good thing. The turtle cupcake cake used chocolate icing but I decided against that. That's what Wilton icing color is for!

My sister wanted a "healthier" cupcake for his first birthday...like a carrot cupcake. Carrots DO make things "healthier" but I don't think you could really call this recipe that I decided on "healthy" (Sorry Alex).

When searching for a recipe I ALWAYS look for ingredients that are going to make the final product moist and delicious. I've learned in the past that less ingredients is not always the way to go. Yes, it's more convenient if you have a recipe with very few ingredients, but in cupcakes or cake, you want to look for recipes that have ingredients that make the final product FLAWLESS.

Ingredients that make cupcakes/cake flawless: FATTY SUBSTANCES! These include canola/vegetable oil (I'm not sure that I've seen a recipe that uses olive oil, but there could be some out there), sour cream, Crisco, whole milk, or whipping cream. Apple sauce can also do the trick but this is used to make a recipe healthier instead of using any of the other ingredients above. Vegetables like zucchini or carrots will also make treats more moist because they are wet veggies.

I used this carrot cupcake recipe from one of my favorite websites, Joy of Baking. This recipe was like a spiced carrot cupcake recipe because it had cinnamon in it. It used oil AND applesauce which immediately told me this was going to be a flawless one. I've never baked with applesauce but I've heard so many good things about it. I left the nuts out of this recipe.

Dom was my big helper and grated the carrots for me. Thanks babe!

I one-and-a-halved the recipe so it would make about 18 since 15 people were coming to the party. Well..it actually made 24 so we had some extras :) I used Betty Crocker's design and put the cupcakes in the shape of a turtle. Instead of using chocolate icing though, I colored the icing brown for the turtle's body and then colored some green for his feet and head.

It turned out good! I could have improved the shape of the turtle had we not been almost an hour late getting to the party. Once we dug into the cupcakes though at the party, everyone was raving! So moist and tasty! The icing was divine and I couldn't have been more pleased with how they turned out :)

Shawn ate one in three bites and was looking for more!

I HIGHLY recommend this recipe!

Cheers!

Cheeseburger Cake...Not So Cheeseburger Cake

Current Mood: Wishful (I need to be outside on this beautiful day!)
Current Song: Ed Sheeran-Lego House

Soooooo Meg and I were going to make a Mario out of cupcakes for Dom for his 29th birthday since he is OBSESSED and it was pixelated which matches his tattoo on his arm. We had this planned for a long time and at the last minute, I decided to count the cupcakes to see how many we would need. Ummmm yeah...it was 143. Dom was having a 10 person dinner party for his birthday.

That was a definite no go.

From 10:30 to about 12:00 on Saturday, we sat there trying to figure out what to make. We had major ADD and we were major off that morning (not sure if this had to do with going to Hard Yacht Friday night after the Orioles' opening day or not).

Dom loves food. Period. We decided to go with a cheeseburger cake!! Looking at pictures on Google was VERY misleading (or we just suck). We didn't even take pictures because it looked too sloppy :(

Bottom line. Meg and I probably shouldn't attempt to bake together anymore. Hehe.

This is what we did: We made a chocolate and a vanilla cake in two 9 inch round pans. The chocolate cake came out FANTASTIC! The whole cake was good just pretty sloppy looking. We cut the vanilla cake in half so we could make the two buns. The chocolate cake was obviously the burger patty. In between of each layer, we put vanilla butter cream icing. This was the real messed up part that disappointed me very much. We didn't think to check on how much butter Dom had in his fridge and Meg had already gone out once to get a bag of powdered sugar for the icing. We decided to use margarine. WORST IDEA EVER!! DON'T DO THIS!! It's called butter cream for a reason! It ended up tasting like store-bought nasty @$$ Betty Crocker icing in a can. GROSS! Had to add some extra vanilla extract to make it taste decent.

Anyways...then we went out a second time to grab some fondant. I HIGHLY recommend using Satin Ice fondant. It is soft, doesn't dry out too too easily, and actually tastes good! We used icing color to knead in some red for tomatoes and yellow for cheese.

Important Note: Use gloves!! We had dye all over our hands :(

We stuck "tomatoes" and corners of "cheese" in between the top "bun" and "burger" and piped green icing in around the bottom bun layer to look like lettuce. We added some copper icing to the top of the cake, sprinkled real sesame seeds and VOILA! We had ourselves a lop-sided cheeseburger cake!

Meg rushed off to work and Dom walked in 2 hours later knowing EXACTLY what it was. He made a good point: When have you ever seen a perfect looking cheeseburger?!

Sorry...no pictures to provide as Meg forbid me.

We used this chocolate cake recipe--it was delicious! Used hazelnut coffee grounds instead of espresso powder. YUM! It is indeed the best chocolate cake recipe ever.

Cheers!

What to do...What to do...

Current Mood: Chipper and ready for the weekend!

Current Song: Broadway--Goo Goo Dolls on 90s Alternative Radio

So Meg and I are still pondering on what to make Dom for his birthday dessert for the dinner party tomorrow. My mini cheesecakes came out PRETTY good last Sunday, but this weekend's dessert needs to be FLAWLESS. Hmmm...

On a separate note, I've been searching blogs recently for desserts that I definitely want to try. Here are a few everyone should check out because they look DELISH! (I've already printed them!)

From the blog, Bake at 350:

Birthday Cake Oreo Stuffed Brownies  

From the blog, Life Made Simple:

Graham Cracker S'mores Bars 

Biscoff Oatmeal Raisin Cookies (Biscoff is a vegan spread that tastes like graham crackers and is totally worth baking with!)

Almond Joy Macaroons 

Some not so sweet recipes that I must try from Life Made Simple:

Potato Corn and Bacon Chowder

Pizza Muffins

The above blogs have AMAZING recipes--take a look!

Now back to thinking about what we're making tomorrow morning for the boyfriend. He's turning the big 29 on Monday--almost 30!!

Cheers!

Healthy Mini Cheesecakes

Well...I'm not sure they are HEALTHY but they are definitely HEALTHIER! Instead of the sour cream, POUNDS of cream cheese, and sugar, this recipe (thanks Mom!!) uses yogurt, honey, and just 2 blocks of cream cheese. Don't get me wrong, this is still plenty of cream cheese, but I've seen recipes that have literally a pound of cream cheese! No one needs that! 

My mom had this recipe from back in the day and she wrote it up in her little recipe book at home. However, she did not include any directions at all! The only instructions she included was the baking temperature and time which, in fact, is all ya really need for cheesecakes. She said everyone loved this recipe, so I decided to try it out for Easter Sunday! 

It's simple--cream cheese, honey, yogurt, eggs, and vanilla. There is a topping that is just yogurt, honey, and vanilla and I made this, but it wasn't really enough so there was just a tad on top of each mini. She also included almond extract in the main filling, but I left this out since I was planning on topping each mini with cherry pie filling and crushed Oreo cookies. Her recipe was also for a whole cheesecake but turning such into minis is so easy! Just reduce the cooking time (which I apparently forgot to do!), place cupcake liners in a cupcake pan (or 2), divide the graham cracker crust evenly among each, fill with cheesecake filling, then bake at 350! 

What I changed: Like I said, I made minis. I TOTALLY forgot to reduce the baking time (silly me) so the tops of each were a tad brown--this isn't a bad thing though! And they weren't burnt so that's good! I would reduce the baking time from 50 minutes to about 40 though next time. I made a homemade graham cracker crust from a recipe I found online--about 1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs, 3 tbsp. sugar, 5 tbsp. unsalted melted butter, and a dash of salt--and placed a good amount in each cupcake liner. I baked for 5 minutes before putting the filling in each. I omitted the almond extract from the filling and used vanilla yogurt. This made the cheesecakes SUPER vanilla-y which was a different but yummy flavor. 

Once I made the topping (the little that it made for each cheesecake) I didn't put the cheesecakes back in the oven like my mother had said since they were already well done. I simply topped with cherry pie filling and crushed Oreo cookies and placed in the fridge until we left for Easter dinner! 

Everyone said they were scrumptious at dinner! 

Random Fact: Cheesecakes DO NOT have to always be cooked. Find a recipe that doesn't include eggs and you will discover that you can place it in the fridge without using your oven! 

Cheers!